David Icke was an English sportscaster who, in the early '90s, became the national spokesman of the UK Green Party. And then he kinda went nuts. Or had a spiritual epiphany. Either one.

In 1991 he announced, on television, that he was the son of God. His basic history is laid out in this wonderful video from Jon Ronson's documentary on Icke. In 1999, Icke decided that the Brotherhood, the one world government, and the Illuminati are all led, at the top, by lizard people. Literal lizard people. Non-human Reptilian humanoids from other planets who live in underground caverns.

Icke has been accused of antisemitism, but Icke has always insisted — convincingly — that when he says "Lizard people" he literally means "lizard people." "Lizard people" do not represent Jews. Jews are humans! Lizard people are not!

And everyone powerful either works for or is an actual lizard person.

The Lizard people are seven feet tall and the come from a star called Alpha Draconis in the constellation of Draco They eat fear and negativity, which is why they make us make wars and stuff, all the time, and also 9/11. Also they are the ancient Sumerian gods who genetically engineered Homo sapiens to be their slaves.

This theory takes a lot of very common conspiracies, involving The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Federal Reserve and the British royal family, and then says the puppet-masters are aliens who drink the blood of blond, blue-eyed children. This makes more traditional conspiracy theorists, like Alex Jones, suspect that Icke is either a con man or actually literally a plant by the Illuminati whose job is the discredit the theorists who are really onto something big.

But Icke still has thousands of followers, across the world. Many of them are in the western United States. One of them was Richard Heene.

And according to Heene's former assistant Robert Thomas, Heene believed he could use an electrically charged weather balloon to attract UFOs. So maybe Heene planned on using the balloon to expose the UFOs of the Lizard People on live television? Or he's just going to use his Balloon Boy publicity to warn us about the Lizard People's planned 2012 apocalypse.

Regardless of what it all meant, one thing is clear: the Lizard People are responsible for all of us staring at a balloon for a couple hours last week.

Also: this is a great time to be viral marketing for the upcoming ABC miniseries event V! How about, yes, skywriting? Wonderful. That miniseries is about a race of aliens who pretend to be our friends but really they are lizard people bent on conquering the Earth and eating us.